Vintage 1967 EKO Condor Electric Guitar

The first time I laid eyes on this guitar was in the showroom of LoDuca Brothers warehouse in Milwaukee, which was another of those “Temples of Doom” you hear me talk about periodically. LoDuca Brothers were (or was if you consider it a company, not siblings) the American importers and distributors of EKO guitars (actually Rickenbacker handled the West Coast). LoDuca Brothers had its roots in a late 1930s, early ‘40s accordion duo Vaudeville act featuring Thomas and Gaetano (Guy) LoDuca. According to their son, Mickey, as good Italian sons, the brothers handed their earnings over to their father, who paid them an allowance and put some in savings. When they’d amassed a couple grand, they opened the first of what would become a chain of music studios around Milwaukee. As they thrived, they began to import and sell LoDuca brand accordions sourced from Oliviero Pigini of Recanati, Italy, just north of Castelfidardo, a town that is still the hub of accordion manufacturing in Italy.

As we’ve talked about before, accordions were a big fad among young Baby Boomers in the early to mid-1950s. This was good for the LoDucas business. But when the wind was squeezed out of the demand for accordions, it kind of left the LoDucas with empty hands. They played around with importing keyboards—including the actual black and white key assemblies—until, fortuitously, folk music happened and demand for guitars began to pick up toward the end of the 1950s.

Vintage 1967 EKO Condor Electric Guitar

Pigini knew only too well about the drop in sales of accordions in the US, of course. So the company decided to expand into guitar manufacturing. LoDuca Brothers had an accordion distribution network with around 600 outlets and was doing business with Pigini, so they were a natural partner to handle the expansion into guitars.

As far as I know, EKO was the brand name chosen for Pigini’s guitars and didn’t come off another existing line of instruments. I don’t think it was ever used on accordions (though it eventually did get put on some electronic keyboards and drums). Just as with accordions, Pigini would gladly put the brand name of your choice on a batch of guitars, but EKO was their main string moniker. EKO guitars debuted in 1961.

The first EKO guitars were acoustics and among the first customers was Sears. LoDuca had imported a little chord organ for Sears beginning in 1959, so they had an established relationship. The first EKO electric guitars were a pair of plastic-covered solidbodies, the Models 500 and 700, covered in sparkle plastic, plus a range of archtops, introduced in 1962.

From the get-go Pigini relied on input from LoDuca Brothers to develop guitars that would sell in the American market. In this regard LoDuca enlisted a number of professional guitarists from the Milwaukee area, who endorsed EKOs.

Vintage 1967 EKO Condor Electric Guitar

LoDuca and EKO hit the market at a good time. EKO’s biggest year was probably 1967, when this Condor was made. It’s the huge ’67 catalog that most frequently circulates in the paper trade. I fell in love with this the moment I laid eyes on it. I mean, it’s so T-Bird (as in Ford with a porthole) or Edsel (yeah, I loved those, too). That pale pink with the black neck. And four—count ‘em—four pickups. It pretty much screams out for a matching tuxedo. Besides being a looker, this guitar actually plays pretty well, too. It’s light-weight and comfortable. The single-coil pickups aren’t screamers, but they’re beefy enough. You get a nice variety of tones, though not those swell glassy out-of-phase sounds like on a jimmied Strat. Having four on-off switches is darned awkward, but otherwise this is a sweetheart.

So, why was the warehouse this came out of another Temple of Doom? Mainly because of a confluence of events. Demand for guitars in the US began to drop in 1968. Tastes changed. Hendrix, Clapton and Bloomfield were whetting appetites for axes capable of chopping, not matching tuxedos. Then, at some time probably around 1968 or ’69, Oliviero Pigini, who loved fast sports cars, died in a car crash. Anecdotal evidence suggests that EKO’s seasoned wood supply burned up in 1970, but I can’t confirm that. In any case, quality supposedly declined.

In any case, business waned and LoDuca Brothers found itself sitting on a warehouse full of unsold EKO guitars. And there they sat for years. Fast forward and in the 1980s vintage guitar collecting became all the rage. Collectors and dealers got the word and began to mine the trove at bargain prices. Temple of Doom indeed! When I strode in, the pickings were comparatively slim, but there was still plenty of guitar eye candy left, including this two-tone beauty, as fine a sight as any gleaming T-Bird, or maybe a pink Cadillac!

Peachy Keen (Vintage 1967 EKO Condor Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

EKO Guitars

EKO Guitars started in Italy in 1959 by Oliviero Pigini. It soon became the largest guitar manufacturer in Europe producing a half million guitars a year. Although primarily distributed throughout Europe, some models found their way to North America in the 1960’s via Milwaukee’s LoDuca brothers. Many of these “budget” guitars were purchased by our parents as student guitars and found their way into the back of a closet. Over the years, with the help of EBAY, many have surfaced and found their way into my collection. Here are some highlights to share. Enjoy!

Vintage EKO Condor Electric Guitar

Vintage EKO Condor Electric Guitar (Red)

Vintage EKO 12-String Electric Guitar (Violin)

EKO 500 4V Woodgrain
The early 60’s were the best years for EKO Guitars after evolving from an accordion factory and bringing with it the unusual switches and finishes. This is a vinyl woodgrain. The 4V meant 4 pickups, 3V as 3, etc.+

Vintage EKO 500 4V Electric Guitar (Woodgrain)

EKO 700 4V
More from the early 60’s was this silver sparkle 700 4V. The 700 series was a very distinct design, odd cutaways. The switches were 1+2, 1+3, 2+3, 3+4, 1+4, etc. trying to give the player every possible combination.

Vintage EKO 700 4V Electric Guitar (White)

EKO 500 1V
Here is a nice elegant design for a single pickup EKO Guitar. I really loved EKO use of vinyl coverings for the bodies (like the accordion days) and the interesting materials for pickguard.

EKO Club
Here is a rare EKO Guitars 6 string that seems to be modeled after the Hofner Club Series. It appears to be early/mid 1960’s based on the parts, but I’ve never seen another.

Vintage EKO Club Electric Guitar

EKOMASTER Blue
Here is the Cadillac of the EKO sparkle days. Elaborate push button switches, rotary volume and tone controls. Set necks. Striped see through pickguard.

Vintage EKO Ekomaster Electric Guitar (Blue)

EKOMASTER GOLD
Here is the Cadillac of EKO Guitars sparkle days. Elaborate push button switches, rotary volume and tone controls. Set necks. Striped see through pickguard.

Vintage EKO Ekomaster Electric Guitar (Gold)

EKO Guitars Barracuba Bass and 6 string
Here is a pair of EKO Florentine (aka. barracuda) guitars. beautifully detailed pickguard match the redburst finish.

Vintage EKO Barracuda Electric Guitar & Bass (Set)

Back Catalog Memories: EKO Guitars from MyRareGuitars.com

These guitars were imported into the United States during the 1960’s by Milwaukee import company, Deluca Brothers Music. This particular model – The Cobra Series – was a “student” entry level guitar. They were available in single and double pickup 6 string version, mainly in Black, Sunburst or Red. Also in a 12 string version in Sunburst or Red and a 30″ scale Bass in Sunburst. Surprisingly nice necks on these guitars even 50 years later, the body material is extremely lightweight and the guitars are fun to play.

EKO Cobra 6-String Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960's EKO Cobra 6-String Electric Guitar (Red)

Vintage 1960's EKO Cobra 6-String Electric Guitar (Red)

Vintage 1960's EKO Cobra 6-String Electric Guitar (Red)

Vintage 1960's EKO Cobra 6-String Electric Guitar (Red)

Vintage 1960's EKO Cobra 6-String Electric Guitar (Red)

Vintage 1960's EKO Cobra 6-String Electric Guitar (Red)

Vintage 1960's EKO Cobra 6-String Electric Guitar (Red)

EKO Cobra 12-String Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960's EKO Cobra 12-String Electric Guitar (Sunburst)

Vintage 1960's EKO Cobra 12-String Electric Guitar (Sunburst)

Vintage 1960's EKO Cobra 12-String Electric Guitar (Sunburst)

Vintage 1960's EKO Cobra 12-String Electric Guitar (Sunburst)

Vintage 1960's EKO Cobra 12-String Electric Guitar (Sunburst)

Vintage 1960's EKO Cobra 12-String Electric Guitar (Sunburst)

Vintage 1960's EKO Cobra 12-String Electric Guitar (Sunburst)

Back Catalog Memories: 1960’s EKO Cobra Guitars from MyRareGuitars.com

Vintage 1965 Juliett Delux Electric Guitar

You don’t need years of study to figure out this came from south of the Alps. A German guitar would have an innovative laminated neck and perhaps two more switches than you can figure out what to do with or a finger-operated, spring-loaded vibrato. No one but Italians—or someone pretty close—would make a guitar in avocado green with a green-black-silver mesh pickguard and matching pickup covers! I didn’t need two seconds to grab it off the dealer who showed it to me, no matter where it came from! I mean, avocado green?! You gotta own a guitar in that color, especially if it comes with color-coordinated appointments!

But there’s a long way from figuring out at a glance that this is Italian to figuring out what the heck it is! Like many of the guitars I’ve picked up over the years, this Juliet became an unsolved mystery buried in the back of my guitar room for ages. Actually, quite a few apparently Italian mysteries collected there gathering dust.

Vintage 1965 Juliett Delux Electric Guitar

But I have this thing about learning what’s up about any guitar I own. It’s why I got into the guitar history game in the first place. So these guitars nagged at me. Then one day I discovered www.fetishguitars.com, a web site devoted to Italian guitars. This site is about the best—and almost only—source on the subject at this point in time.

Besides a general lack of information, part of the problem involves the fact that so many Italian—read European—guitarmakers, like the Japanese, made guitars for a lot of different people carrying many different brand names and logos. Just as guitars made by Tombo in Japan ended up in the U.S. as Norma guitars, guitars made by various Italian manufacturers ended up in both Europe and America carrying a wide variety of names, usually not that of the factory.

Vintage 1965 Juliett Delux Electric Guitar

Back to this Juliett Delux. Mucking around the fetishguitars.com site led me to a company named Zerosette from Castelfidardo, Italy. Castelfidardo was—and is—one of the world’s centers of accordion-making. It began there in the late 1800s and even today it’s the home of an international accordion festival and competition. Its heyday was the 1950s when the accordion craze briefly swept the U.S. That soon ended, and, as we all know, guitars eventually took over. It turns out that Castelfidardo is located in a region of Italy with a long tradition of guitarmaking. So it was not that hard to add guitars to the mix. This explains why EKO guitars were so successful in the U.S. the early years of the ‘60s.

One of the more obscure shops located in Castelfidardo was called Zerosette. Virtually nothing is known about the actual operation, though you may have encountered their work in various guitars bearing the Goya, Contessa, and Sano.

Tucked among the gems produced by Zerosette are guitars bearing the Juliett Delux and JG brands. A comparison of the shape of one of the Juliett solids is the spittin’ image of this guitar…and even in light green! A look at the pickups shows a certain similarity of shape to others made by Zerosette. None of the examples shown there are quite as fancy as this guitar, but it’s pretty clear that this came from the Zerosette shop. Jack Marchal of fetishguitars.com believes this to be from 1965, based on the components and style. JGs may or may not have been related to the Juliett brand’s owners (other than being made by Zerosette); I suspect them to be for the same company but slightly later.

So, I now feel like I know where this guitar came from and who made it, as much as you can know with our lack of knowledge. When it was made or for whom? That remains a mystery.

All I know for sure is that an avocado guitar with matching parts, that’s way cool. Thank god for Italian guitars! Like I said. Style!

A Taste of Italy (1965 Juliett Delux Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

Vintage 1967 Cameo 1402T Electric Guitar

Actually, the history of this back and forth between violins and guitars goes back at least to the 1880s and involves another cousin, the mandolin. Back in around 1880 a group of performers named the Spanish Students were all the rage in America. They were a mandolin orchestra and before long there were local copies everywhere, soon followed by banjo orchestras, all usually including guitars. Mandolins have bent or arched tops. What followed was some pretty interesting competition as instrument makers started coming up with variations to woo players of different instruments. This is how the tenor banjo came about. Anyhow, into this mix plunged Orville Gibson in the 1890s with his carved top mandolins, emulating the violin. Later came his harp guitars and then Spanish guitars. Then finally his archtops in the 1920s. Similarly, there were other guitarmakers like the Larson Brothers who stressed or bent their tops somewhat like a mandolin. By the 1930s it was commonly accepted that arching the top of a guitar – either by carving or bending – added to the output volume and most makers were producing violin-like guitars, including Kay which made some model with the top and back extending out with a lip like a violin.

Vintage 1967 Cameo 1402T Electric Guitar

The notion of shaping a guitar to look like a fiddle comes from the bass side of guitardom. In the late 1940s Everett Hull started amplifying his double bass with an amplified peg – Ampeg. By 1953 Gibson was producing its violin-shaped Electric bass. By ’56 Hofner in Germany was producing its version, what would become known as the Beatle Bass thanks to Paul McCartney. It was the Europeans who ran with the idea, and by the early ’60s a number of companies were producing both basses and guitars shaped like fiddles. In around ’64 or ’65 Italian-made EKO violin guitars and basses started coming into the US.

These violin guitars became EKO’s most popular models, so it was only a matter of time before the Europeans’ chief competitors, the Japanese, should come out with their own violin basses and guitars. They embraced the concept with gusto and soon an avalanche of fiddle guitars started emanating from most Japanese shops!

Vintage 1967 Cameo 1402T Electric Guitar

Who sold the Cameo seen here is unknown, but it’s identical to the Aria 1402T made by or for Arai in Japan. Japan had a virtually indecipherable system of production and exportation back then, with any number of large (or small) shops that built the instruments and another trading company that sold them to distributors in the market country. By the late ’60s one of Arai’s main suppliers was the legendary Matsumoku factory in MatsumotoCity, so it’s possible this came from there, but who knows? All the appointments are the same as on the Aria version, down to the trapezoid-topped pickups.

What we can say for sure is that this guitar is a bit below a Hofner in grade and certainly as good as an EKO. Violin guitars like this Cameo are light-weight and really comfortable to play. Back in the ’60s when this guitar was made Japanese guitars, and especially their pickups, were pretty much a joke to serious guitar players, but looking back these are really not that bad as long as you can deal with the chance for feedback!

So, next time you pick up a violin-shaped guitar, you’ll know it’s about a lot more than Sir Paul. Take that violin players!

Fiddling While Rome Burns (1967 Cameo 1402T Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

1965 Avanti Electric Guitar

It’s amazing how little you know when you’re in the middle of things. Especially when you’re young. Even though I was prime-time ’60s, I didn’t really become aware of Italian guitars until I began writing about them several decades later and, with a personal attachment to Milwaukee, learned of the Lo Duca Brothers and EKO guitars. It was talking with the Lo Ducas that I learned of the accordion connection. Duh.

That’s because those very accordions I’d hated as a kid were the equivalent of what the guitar became a decade later. Very popular. And very Italian. The piano accordion “with keyboards instead of buttons” was invented in Vienna in 1863 and brought to the area of Castelfidardo on the eastern coast of Italy. The instrument was embraced and a lively accordion manufacturing industry grew up in the area. It’s still a major center. While accordions were also made in Germany and Sweden, the vast majority played during the 1950s were from Italy.

1965 Avanti Electric Guitar

As fate would have it, the rage for accordions in the US at least passed by the mid-’50s. Accordion makers struggled to replace the lost business. Lucky for them Baby Boomers like me came along with a taste for playing guitars. Doubly lucky for them, there was a long tradition of guitarmaking in the same part of Italy. When the American electric guitar market exploded in the early 1960s, the Italians were among the first European sources of guitars for meeting the demand. One of the hallmarks of early accordions was the use of plastic covering. Thus it was natural that, when switching to guitars, they should be plastic covered, which brings us back to this Avanti.

Avanti guitars were probably made by the Polverini Brothers of Castelfidardo for European Crafts of Los Angeles beginning in late 1964. For this one, they chose a really cool rootbeer-barrel colored faux-rosewood plastic covering. Most early Italian guitars had either pushbutton or rocker controls adapted from accordions, but this is unusual with a fourway rotary select that let you choose each pickup individually or all at once. All in all a sensible arrangement. Whether the pickups are really humbuckers or single-coil is unknown, but they have that bright ’60s sound, and, anyhow, you really want an Avanti because it looks like rootbeer candy.

1965 Avanti Electric Guitar

Italian guitars continued to be plastic-covered through 1965 or so. By 1966 guitar players were becoming more discriminating and Italian guitars switched to more conventional finishes. Though not for long. Rising wages and slacking demand, plus implacable competition from Japanese guitarmakers, led to the demise of Italian guitars by 1968 at the latest, at least in the American market.

Since discovering these plastic-covered marvels I’ve become more interested in the piano accordions that spawned them. I’ve even contemplated picking one up to play it. But one thing they haven’t done. And that’s change my opinions about watching the Lawrence Welk show, no matter how wonaful it may actually have been.

Unexpected Eye Candy (1965 Avanti Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com